How to Play Wind Power

Updated from 1:10 p.m. EDT

I decided to indulge in some food inflation, so yesterday I went to Arturo's Pizza on Houston Street in New York City and ordered a $160 large pie pizza.

I'm a believer in pizza diversification. I can't ever decide on a topping. Do I want onions and bacon? Or green peppers and pepperoni? Or lobster and broccoli? There are too many permutations, and if you make the wrong decision, there's no turning back, and serious loss is the only possible outcome -- like with a portfolio.

So I ordered all 34 toppings on the menu. At $4 a topping (except for the lobster, which was $15), that seems like some serious food inflation. (I vaguely remember back in the good old days when a topping was no more than $2 per.) Unfortunately, Arturo's couldn't satisfy me. "We tried," the waitress told me, "but the pizza won't be able to cook with all those toppings on it."

So we negotiated, and we settled on about 28 of the toppings. "I don't know how your stomach is going to handle it," she said when she served the tour de force. "It's too much meat." But hey, doesn't the fish balance out the red meat? And don't the vegetables count for something? Can't I argue that this is simply a balanced meal?

But wait. Should I even be talking about food inflation? That's so first-week-of-June 2008. I can't keep track of the "important concepts" of the day. Last month the hot topic was "Are we at war with Iran?" Then it was "Is oil going to $1000?" Then it was "Is the entire banking system going to collapse?"

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